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CRIME

Parents arrested over selling daughter for a van and €5,000

The Spanish Civil Guard has arrested parents who are suspected of selling their 14-year-old daughter for €5,000 and a van.

Published: 21 June 2017 16:18 CEST
Parents arrested over selling daughter for a van and €5,000
A Spanish Civil Guard patrol car. Photo: Outisnn / Wikimedia Commons.

As El Pais reported on Wednesday, the investigation began on April 19th after the parents from Pedrera in fact reported their daughter missing. 

After taking statements from various witnesses, the Civil Guard started to suspect that the girl had possibly been sold by her parents, who are Romanian, to another Romanian man who was living in Lucena del Puerto.

The Civil Guard then started to search for the girl, first within Spain, then elsewhere in Europe, until they were able to locate her in Obrežje, Slovenia.

The girl was found travelling towards Romania with an older man with the initials V.M., whose father allegedly bought her. Investigators believe that the man’s father had arranged with the girl’s parents to buy her for his son, in exchange for €5,000 and a van.

Sources close to the case told El Pais that the parents only went to the police after the buyer did not pay out the total amount they wanted.

The Civil Guard was then able bring the girl back to Spain.

The agents then requested from Spanish judicial authorities a European order to detain V.M., who was then arrested in Romania in May. He faces charges of human trafficking, sexual abuse of a minor under 16, and inducing a minor to abandon home.

The girl’s parents as well as the father of V.M. have also been arrested and charged with human trafficking.

CRIME

Spain investigates letters ordering companies to not hire foreigners

For five years, numerous companies in Spain's northern Navarre region have been receiving e-mails urging them to not hire foreign workers and threatening them with boycotts if not, correspondence that's now being investigated as a hate crime.

Published: 19 September 2024 10:04 CEST
Spain investigates letters ordering companies to not hire foreigners

The email address  from which they were sent was always the same, the wording very similar. As far as authorities know, they continued for at least five years between 2017 and 2023.

A court in Pamplona has now taken the matter on and is investigating these e-mails as a possible hate crime.

Some of these e-mails were sent to the director of a residence in Estella/Lizarra in 2020. He received up to 10 of these from the same sender urging him to “nationalise his workforce”.

He publicly denounced the e-mail and released it. The text read: “In the face of possible economic reactivation after the current pandemic, we encourage you to nationalise your workforce; that is, to replace immigrants (including those who are naturalised) with nationals or, if you were to increase the workforce, to hire only nationals. Internally or externally (clients, neighbours, suppliers, etc.) we already know which companies have too many foreigners, and with that information, lists of companies have been made according to sectors so that people know who they employ with their money. Contracting is free, but so is consumption. This is politically incorrect, but not at all illegal. It is simply necessary”.

Many other companies received similar emails around the same time.

In the summer of 2023 the case reached the Racism and Xenophobia Assistance Service (SARX), which decided to carry out an investigation and finally passed it on to the Prosecutor’s Office.

Now, the first Investigative Court of Pamplona is investigating the size and scale of this situation to see how many companies the letters have actually reached.

Johanna Flores, lawyer and coordinator of the Racism and Xenophobia Assistance Service, has emphasised the importance of these e-mails being investigated as a possible crime: “It is very positive because when there is a person who wants to systematically send emails of this kind, they will think twice, since they know that it could have a criminal nature”.

Almost half of all new workers in Navarra in the last year are foreigners, according to 2024 social security figures.

Spain’s National Security Council warned the government about a rise in xenophobia and racist hate crimes back in 2019. There have also been numerous counts of racial discrimination towards prospective tenants and home-buyers. 

In 2023 Real Madrid star Vinicius was racially abused in Spain’s top flight football league. Writing on Instagram, Vinicius said Spain was viewed as “a country of racists” in his homeland.

READ ALSO: The racism problem that has blighted Spanish football

This type of racial abuse is not new in Spanish football.. In 2004, thousands of Spanish fans shouted racial insults at black players during an England-Spain match at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium in Madrid. This prompted outrage in the UK and threatened to escalate into a diplomatic row, with both prime ministers at the time – Tony Blair and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero – condemning the actions.

Alba García Martín, a member of the anti-racism NGO SOS Racismo has explained: “The immigration law is racist to its core. It does not allow you to regularise your migration status for three years, it pushes immigrants to employment off-the-books and does not provide you any kind of rights as a citizen. All the other racial issues derive from this law. There is no anti-racist legislation, for example, for crimes related to racism. There are no anti-racist laws,” she adds. 

READ MORE: Spain to debate blanket legalisation of its 500,000 undocumented migrants

It’s hoped that if these e-mails are found to be a hate crime, it will set a precedent and stop others from considering these types of attacks in the future.

READ ALSO: ‘Homologación’ – How Spain is ruining the careers of thousands of qualified foreigners

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